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| A Little Middle of the Night
ISBN: 9781587299261
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / University of Iowa Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Language & Literature;
In her Iowa prize-winning debut, Brodak unveils a ductile yet confident use of language and a penchant for formal experimentation. Stark natural description sets the dreary mood in a world haunted by "a steady massacre of clouds." Her poems vacillate between hermetic and accessible, often unveiling pleasurable surprises as the fog clears: "Wet licks of an animal on my ankle, oh say/ it's a good thing. Take us out of here./ War begins inside of one person, imagine that." Brodak often borrows language from writers old and new: one series includes quotes from poet Jorie Graham; there is also a "Melville novel, as abridged by me"; and even a cento entitled, "Joseph Conrad's Last Novel (Which is Comprised Entirely of Face Color Used in His Previous Novels)". Intertextual, funny, sharp, often elliptical yet surprisingly intimate, this is a strong debut. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Molly Brodak was born in Michigan on March 29, 1980. She was a poet, writer, and baker. For a time, she was also a lecturer in English and humanities at Augusta State University in Augusta, Georgia. Her poetry collection, A Little Middle of the Night, was published in 2010 and won the Iowa Poetry Prize. Her next poetry collection, The Cipher, is due to be published in October 2020. Her work has appeared in Granta, Guernica, Poetry, the Colorado Review, FIELD, Ninth Letter, the Journal, the Northwest Review, the Laurel Review, the New Orleans Review, the Hayden's Ferry Review, and in other media. She wrote a memoir entitled, Bandit: A Daughter's Memoir, in which she talked about life with her father, a compulsive liar and bank robber. Her talent as a baker was seen when she appeared on ABC's The Great American Baking Show in 2019. She went on to start a home baking business, Kookie House. Molly Brodak died on March 8, 2020 at the age of 39. (Bowker Author Biography) |
